


Mother Tongue

by onnari



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Almyra (Fire Emblem), Claude von Riegan Backstory, Claude von Riegan is a Giant Nerd, Claude von Riegan-centric, Gen, Language Nerd Claude von Riegan, Pre-Canon, The Fódlan Mom Agenda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25829599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnari/pseuds/onnari
Summary: Khalid’s mother shares much with him from a young age, but for everything she teaches little is of her homeland and never is it in her native speech.Khalid never could let a mystery be, especially one so close to home.
Relationships: Claude von Riegan & Tiana von Riegan
Comments: 12
Kudos: 46





	Mother Tongue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Izilen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Izilen/gifts).



> Izzy: it's yours now. Your influence was already all over it. <3

Khalid’s mother shares much with him from a young age—how to approach a horse, how best to grip a knife, how not to waver against the scrutiny of court—but for everything she teaches him little is of her homeland and never is it in her native speech.

“Never from behind, but head on, directly,” she instructs. “Blade down unless you mean to strike.” A hand to his shoulder to make him stand taller. “Meet everyone’s eye in a room.”

Clipped words that are rough but smooth, gaunt but musical, in an accent all her own. A sign of all the language she keeps to herself—keeps from him even when it halts a verbal advance, his mother reaching for a particular word that eludes her in Almyran while another already rests on the tip of her tongue.

He’s old enough to be beginning to grasp his written letters, watching her cut through an explanation of why she must leave him to make a show of strength against Vandad, one of his cousins and political rivals in Verkana in the north, when he asks if she might be afraid.

“Of an arrogant deadbeat?” she scoffs. “Never.”

“No,” he says plainly, “of speaking Fódlani.” 

Her jaw goes slack then works for a moment, but she does not try to convince him that it is a foolish question. He is young but already he knows that there is a fine line he must walk in public.

“I am never afraid for myself,” she finally says, gaze just over his shoulder, “but there isn’t much need for it, here in Almyra.”

His voice goes quiet with the promise of a secret, his small frame leaning forward. “You can speak it with me though. When it’s just us.”

Her gaze slides back into focus, sharp and impervious. “You have your work cut out for you already with Old and Middle Almyran and the regional dialects here. It’s better not to confuse yourself, like I confuse myself sometimes.”

“I’ll master them all,” he retorts, flopping back onto his bed. “You know how quick a learner I am.”

“Less talk, Khalid,” she warns, even as a hint of amusement threatens to crinkle her eyes, “more results. Fódlan and its languages can wait until the time is right.”

But the time is never right. It’s only when something’s gone wrong that he hears anything Fódlani pass her lips, immediate and instinctive. A suffered setback, a sudden disadvantage, a certain downfall. 

The emergence of Khalid’s Crest.

It shows itself as he’s posturing in front of a crowd of other students at the archery range, meeting childish but biting taunts with a fast draw of his thumb and the best running leap his short legs can manage. A glimmer of light, a symbol of some kind, there and gone as he releases the bowstring, and he nearly drops his bow in shock. Across the range the arrow pierces its target, clean and perfect.

His mind goes blank with exhilaration, strength returning to his aching arms, before he remembers himself and all that surround him. His detractors’ response is swift, but he is not prepared for its pointed fervor, the Fódlani insults and accusations of deceit they hurl at him.

He’s good at dodging and rebuffing attacks. Even better at drawing back.

Running away, his mother often calls it, and she cuts short a meeting to rout him out of his usual hideaway in the royal wyvern pen. She finds him by finding Maha, his rare moonbright wyvern that keeps him close, wing wrapped tight around him. His mother spares a pat against the growing wyvern’s neck in distracted, disgruntled greeting, muttering all the while to herself in Fódlani. “Riegan” and “Crest” are the only words he’s able to hold on to as she switches back to Almyran—two words she seems to have no proper translation for. 

He tries the shape of them out for himself, and then because he cannot let go of the vitriol his Crest inspired, asks, “Is it a bad thing?”

“It’s a kind of power. Something only certain people from Fódlan have,” she says, more delicate than usual with her words for all her frustration. “Like all power, it can be used for good or bad.” 

He tucks his head into Maha’s warm neck, listening to the rumble of her breath and steadies himself. “Why do I have it? Do you?”

Her mouth pulls at the corner, elongates the jagged scar that lines her lip, a grim vision before him. “No one knows exactly how it works, and no—I don’t. That is why I can tell you it is nothing to depend on. Better to ignore your Crest than put everything on it like a fool from Fódlan. It’s only our own strength that can actually see us through, Khalid.”

But strength alone is not always enough, and it’s when a confrontation takes a bad turn that his mother inevitably slips back into Fódlani language. A successful blow dealt against her, a surprise attack, dire loss suffered on a battlefield.

An attempt on Khalid’s life. 

She’s wraith-like in the ring of the lamplight, hovering above him laid out in his bed, his side wrapped tight, red seeping through even his bandages, but it’s not the scare or the blood loss that makes her words dim and incomprehensible.

It’s when his eyes sting, his vision clouding, that she finally returns to Almyran, asking for his own account of the event. She sits beside him, pushing aside the tomes he’s learning to stumble through to make a space for herself. In stony silence she listens to him confess how he’d been baited and jeered into a reenactment of legendary one on one battle. One hero pitted against another, Fódlan versus Almyra, and of course it had fallen to Khalid to take up the opposing side. It was no act of play, though. His opponent, a vizier’s son, had struck him down with unexpected fierceness, an attack staged well enough to pass for an unfortunate accident. The apology that fell from the older boy’s mouth never reached his eyes. 

“Hatred is fear,” his mother declares baldly when he’s done. “Do not give into fear yourself. Do not show them weakness.” 

“Is being Fódlani a weakness though?” he asks because he cannot help the question. Because it’s the only thing he can reason when it comes to her. She is a proud woman, never bending to anyone, unashamed in her bearing and power and self. And yet when it comes to Fódlan, she makes little acknowledgement, having cut her ties with the place that shaped her.

She does not take it for the searching question it really is, merely another thrown at him by others. He can tell by the way her body tenses, at the ready. “Your birthright is Almrya. And so I also call Almyra mine. That is all that matters, Fódlani blood or not. Do not heed the ignorance of others.” 

If she sees the irony of keeping him ignorant of his full heritage, she does not own up to it. A less curious child, a less impertinent one, might have never even been bothered by it. But the more his mother does not speak to his Fódlani half—for every turned back, veiled threat, and actual harm it brings him—the more his need to understand his other side grows.

Khalid never could let a mystery be, especially one so close to home.

He reaches for the books that fill the ranks of his bedside attendants, atlases and travel logs hidden in plain sight—even rare volumes filled with a distinct angular script, a complete unknown to him still. 

So he schemes, careful but undaunted, and when he is well enough to return to his combat instructor, Khalid makes one additional request of him.

“Fódlani?” Nader asks, arms crossed and voice more subdued than Khalid has ever heard him. “I don’t think I’d be the best person to ask, boy. I know fighting words more than anything.”

“You’re the same in Almyran,” Khalid quips back and earns a chuckle. “Besides, fights always find me, one way or another. I might as well start there.”

“I’ll give you your start,” Nader yields, and then knowing how much Khalid actually thrives on a challenge, adds, “If you can keep up in your combat drills.” 

Khalid hits his marks on the archery range and gets the names for other possible targets in Fódlani, learns his footwork for sword fighting and studies the blocky script Nader etches into the ground. And when Khalid begins practicing with a heavier training ax, Nader offers him helpful commentary of his form. 

It’s the start he was promised, but it will not do on its own. In secret he hunts down a worn bilingual dictionary, squinting at the phonetic syllabary and trying to copy out any of the words he encounters in common Fódlani, and when his own speech falters, his reading not up to the task of deciphering a page of text, he trades his clothes for those of a servant. 

He knows all the best ways to avoid detection, sneaking out to the sprawling marketplace and the lively anonymity it brings. He’s always lingered by the rarer stalls of Fódlani peddlers, examining their wares and listening to the cadence of their exchanges, sometimes picking up on different dialects. Now he dares to try and make conversation, taking up speech with each merchant he comes across.

He breezes past any surprise and hesitance he meets, friendly and charming enough that their kids invite him to play in the narrow back streets and when they tire he’s the first to suggest they pull out their children’s books, reading over their shoulders in the cramped space at the back of their parents’ stalls.

But it’s not his escapes that eventually get him found out, years into his venture—it’s the untold hours he spends back in his room, working his way through the Fódlani books he always keeps close. His mother, back early from settling an eastern land dispute, finds him by candlelight, trying to keep his eyes open for just another page of early Fódlani history.

She’s walked past the books he keeps without scrutiny countless times, never having much of an eye for books herself, but that night he does not shut the volume he holds in time, leaving its script clear as day, and in a moment she has it in her hand.

He goes very still, waiting for her judgment, wondering if she will sweep across the room like a storming wyvern. Her nostrils flare, but it’s not a reprimand that comes. 

“How much of this do you understand?”

Khalid is used to skirting the truth with others, but it never brings the joy he pretends it does, least of all with the rare few he should be able to entrust with his honesty. Still, he hedges. “Some.”

She makes a sound at the back of her throat. “This one is a little self-righteous if you ask me, but then again, it’s history written by a Fódlaner.” He jumps forward, relieved and eager to have her explain her opinion, but she cuts him off immediately. It’s an interrogation not a discussion that she’s after, trying to determine how he’s come to know any Fódlani in the first place.

For once Khalid says little, doing his best to shield those who played a part, knowingly or not. Her eyes narrow at his stubborn non-answers, but she cannot have it both ways, having him grow strong and steady enough to defend himself and not expect him to stand his ground against her, too. Under different circumstances he could almost imagine her boasting of his accomplishment, and even now there is begrudging respect in her voice as she says, “Tell me, Khalid. Why go through all this effort to learn?”

He works to calm his mind, letting his argument build into something sound and coherent. “Our war generals learn to communicate across battle lines. Scholars in pursuit of knowledge. Merchants who look to trade across borders. Even lovers,” he says, looking at her pointedly, knowing it was his father who was fluent in her language first and not the other way around. “Why shouldn’t a ruler also know a language that their people speak?”

“Is that all?” she asks, unaffected, and he cracks.

“Maybe just so I can understand things better,” he says, clumsier than he’d like, heat traveling up his throat. Frustrated, he barrels on, “Understand myself, the world—my place in it—I don’t know. I barely know anything, and that’s the problem.”

“For every problem it solves, it may cause you another,” she responds at last. But it’s more warning than censure, and her voice is as even as the plains as she adds, “It’s another target at least.” 

“What’s one more? It’s all the same in the end. No matter how Almyran I am, I’m still always seen as Fódlani.” His hands clench unconsciously, hoping to draw a real reaction from her yet. “And in a way they’re not wrong. I am Fódlani, too. I might as well have something to show for it. To know more about where you’re from—even your life there.”

She does not sit with his words for even a moment, no sign of regret or guilt to be found in her quick and plain reply, “That part of my life is over, Khalid. I live here, in the present. Not the past. Look ahead, always.”

Childish as it is, he sticks his chin out at her. “You know better than anyone that I have to look in all directions. There’s no telling from which way an attack might come.”

“And how will you stay vigilant with your head lost in these books?” With rare dramatic emphasis she slams the book shut. “Better to get yourself back to the training field if you have time for this.” 

“There are times when talking your way out of trouble comes in handy, too.”

“With Fódlani? You?” She sets her free hand on her hip. “How?”

“It’s called diplomacy. I might want to try it one day with that border issue we have.” 

She huffs out a breath, shaking her head at the book she still holds. Sometimes, he finds, it’s a battle of outlasting her. In physical combat he’d never be able to, but in conversation he thinks he has an advantage, young as he still is. She is not a woman of words, after all.

There are times though when it doesn’t matter, when he tests her patience too far with his insistence of getting a last word in and making his point be heard. Slowly she lifts her eyes from the book’s cover, her green the same shade as his own. 

“It doesn’t matter what I say, does it?” she says, and he almost misses the words, startled by the dialect she uses. Derdriu, he realizes. “You’ll learn no matter what, won’t you?”

“Yes,” he says, tripping over even such a simple answer in his surprise. “I will.”

Her look is unimpressed, her verbal assessment of his speech discouraging, but it’s only her action that he reads. When she tosses the book back to him, it’s all the invitation he needs.

She never initiates a conversation in any of Fódlan’s languages, but he doesn’t need her to. When he switches over she matches him, sparlike, a test to see if he can keep up as they run through different dialects and regionalisms. It is a series of terrible losses on his part, trying to cover so much ground, but her every critique only makes him more determined to throw himself back into his studies, practicing until her unvarnished criticism begins to mix with approval.

“Textbook pronunciation,” she laughs at his common Fódlani. “A little lifeless and rote, but you’d pass as any forgettable noble.”

Days of studies become months which become years and as time passes, it becomes more than a challenge, more than an abstract source of curiosity—something to lose himself in as the immediate world seems to tighten its grip, threats lying in wait around every corner. He retreats to his room and his language exercises, the texts he trades for in secret and the facts he memorizes. And the more his language skills improve, the more the personal history his mother is still reluctant to share begins to open up before him. The name von Riegan takes him farther than he could ever have imagined, allowing him to trace his lineage through reading up on the history of the Alliance and keeping abreast of its politics by word of Fódlani merchants. 

It’s all an escape, delving into another world that feels like it should belong in part to him already. Something almost tangible and close enough to be just within tantalizing reach. And in the end, when he sees his golden opportunity to cross that distance at last, he can’t hold himself back any longer. 

He reaches out.

It’s when everything is upended that his mother falls back to her native tongue. A crucial detail overlooked, a player underestimated, a plot undetected. 

A Riegan messenger that steps into a private meeting between Khalid and his mother. 

By now, near full-grown, Khalid understands all the words that slip from her mouth. Still, he meets her eyes, weathers the accusation in her stare as she realizes what he’s done—leveraging his own connections and Crest after discovering his uncle dead. 

If it’s the first she’s learned of her brother’s death, he would not know it for the stoic way she sends the messenger away, put under careful guard.

It's only when they’re alone again that emotion comes back through her voice, rounding upon him. “Has this been your plan all along? To just run away? You are not the coward people think you are.”

“I’m not,” he agrees, unflinching. “I’m running towards something.”

She glowers. “And do you even know what that is? There’s still much you do not know of Fódlan.” 

She says it like she isn’t partly to blame for that truth. As if it could dissuade him when it’s the not knowing that calls to him most. When all he’s ever wanted is to know something more than the life he’s living.

“What better reason for going?” he asks, combative enough to be flippant. 

Right on cue, her temper flares. “I tell you not to put your faith in Crests and you turn around and bargain your life on one.”

She cuts as imposing a figure as she always has, her stocky build strong and solid. But no longer does she loom over him like a mountain. Now, they share the same height. He finds his own footing and matches her. 

“Whatever else my Crest may be, it’s still an opportunity. I’d be the bigger fool not to use it to its full advantage.”

“By becoming a pawn to Leicester politics?”

“Last I checked, it’s not a pawn that orchestrates things.” 

“And how long do you think that will last?” Her jaw works, her brows meeting sharply. “How do you expect to inherit Almyra’s throne if you abandon it for another country? To explain your vanishing here?”

“I figure everyone will come up with their own wildly entertaining theories, just like the people of Fódlan did for you. I’ve already heard quite a few versions of that tale.” He laughs but it’s more sound than mirth. “Besides, you’d think they’d actually welcome me disappearing after all the threats on my life.” 

The words land, his mother’s face growing gaunt, and Khalid relents. “Even if I’m able to take the throne here, it is still a long way off. I should use the time well and come to know the larger world. How else can I help to lead it?”

Her lip curls. “You mix up personal and political matters, choosing Fódlan.”

“All politics are personal, really.”

“Khalid.” Her hands flex on nothing, body even shifting away, as close to a tell that she has. Her mouth parts, hangs open, before she finally makes up her mind to say, “Fódlan is not the escape you think it will be. It will disappoint.”

“Like it disappointed you? Like Almyra has disappointed me?” He remembers to breathe, the tightness in his chest easing slightly. “I already know your opinion of Fódlan, but it’s about time I formed my own.”

She goes still, gaze trained on some distant point beyond him, and as the moment stretches on he thinks maybe he’s done enough. Another exchange of words he’s outlasted her in. Maybe even won. But he’s still not prepared for the weight of her response.

Her eyes close, breathing out a noise of frustration, but when she speaks her voice is more serene than anything. “Go then. I concede.” It’s more gracious an admittance of defeat than he’s ever heard from her. Giving away nothing, she nods curtly at him. “I taught you to fight your own battles, after all. You can start by explaining yourself to your father.”

She does not leave him alone though when it comes to his final preparations. There, she finally steps in where she has not before, filling the gaps of his education as she directs him in Fódlani conventions, all in her native tongue.

The night before he’s to leave she stays up with him, a drinking party set just for two, sharing a single goblet between them. An Almyran custom they make their own as they weave a conversation through the different languages of the Fódlani region.

Lifting his first cup, Khalid says in Adrestian, “I’ll need a name.”

His mother moves slowly after taking the goblet back, carefully maneuvering the ceramic wine jug at her side, a vessel fashioned in the form of a deer. From its exaggerated pouring snout red liquid flows smoothly out into her cup, starting their second round. “Are you looking for suggestions?” she asks in a rough approximation of southern Faerghese. “I’d expect you to have already thought of one from all those books you read.”

He laughs, caught, as he accepts his second cup in the blunt vernacular of Goneril. “Yes, several actually. But I could use your opinion.”

She says nothing, just nods at him to proceed, listening intently as he lists names off. She finally stops him at Claude with an undignified snort, beckoning him to drink. 

Goblet back in hand, she explains in her own Derdriu dialect, “Incredibly common. Not a name I’d pick for my son, but good for blending in.”

“That’s the idea,” he answers in just the same.

“Claude von Riegan,” she considers, “there is a ring to it.”

So they agree, but Khalid waits until he’s finishing off another round before he asks in common Fódlani, “Is there really nothing you miss?”

“Of course there are things,” she replies, immediate and frank, not waiting on ceremony to pour herself a new drink. Once she has, her pause before actually draining the cup is just as brief. “But I made my choice. There’s no point in dwelling on it.”

For all their differences, maybe that is their starkest. She is good at drawing her lines and sticking to them, neat and secure. For Khalid the lines are merely boundaries, restrictions boxing him in. Most days, it feels like all Khalid does is dwell on possibility. 

Studying the last of their wine in the cup given back to him, he can’t help himself, his words tumbling free, one running into the next. “I still don’t understand why it must always be one over the other. Why we’re even expected to choose. The way we cut each other down instead of trying to learn from each other—what good has that ever done?” 

He cuts himself off, composure in danger of breaking. Capable and confident, that is the impression he wants to leave her with, but his pulse still races as he holds her eye and finishes out their drink. 

A frown settles across her face, but her thoughts remain unknown as she grasps the empty jug and goblet, movements methodical and efficient in clearing the table. The task done, she makes him wait a minute longer, reining her words in still.

“I raised you for the world as I saw it.” She shakes her head, just once, hair slipping further from its braid, curling around her face. “But a child’s vision always stretches further. As your mother and your Queen, I hope you rise and meet it.”

It’s more than he thought she would grant him. A blessing or an offering. So in the quiet that descends, their night at an end, Khalid reaches for a sheaf of paper and slides it towards her. “If you have something you want to say... Some message for me to deliver.”

She sends him off to rest instead, paper untouched, and the morning that dawns is one with good promise, a clear sky to bridge the distance between him and his hopes and dreams. Underneath its expanse his mother kisses both his cheeks and coolly bids him safe travel, never one for tears in times of farewell.

It’s him, unexpectedly, who draws out the moment of actual parting with it now upon him, extending his hand towards her. He swallows past something caught in his throat, finds his voice again in clear, steadying Almyran. “Don’t you have anything for me to pass along?”

Her teeth flash in a tight-lipped smile as she takes his hand and closes it in upon itself. She waits until he’s astride Maha’s back, the wyvern’s wings already unfurled to launch them both off the ground, before she responds. The last thing he hears from her for many moons.

She raises her arm, gesturing him on. “All my missing years go with you. You’ll speak volumes for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes Claude won't ever stop talking when you try to write him and then you're like I'm going to make something specifically about him and language and then you end up here. Also, an earnest contribution to the FÓDLAN MOM AGENDA.
> 
> For the curious: The reenactment of one on one battle is in reference to an ancient Persian battle tradition called mard o mard. The wine drinking scene is similarly inspired by Persian custom, and yes, I was being extremely extra including that ceramic deer. Maha’s name means “moon” in Old Persian.
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_onnari)


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